Last week over the course of two nights, the Second FanGraphs staff league held our annual auction. As always, I entered with a simple strategy – stay calm, nab the one or two big names you need, but mostly let the rest of the league cash out early, and clean up with sleepers and guys who slip through the cracks.

That didn’t work out so well this time. You can see the way the auction went here. If you scroll through far enough, you’ll see that those sleepers didn’t sleep and the guys falling through the cracks didn’t fall that far. An overabundance of caution led to moderate early prices and too much cash to spend later. So what’s an owner to do?

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I have heard from a handful of ottoneu players who have already auctioned, but for most of you, auction season is just kicking off, myself included. We are just a few weeks from Opening Day and Tuesday evening I’ll be sitting down to my first auction of the year.

And when I sit down, I’ll be organized. I’ll have two computers open (probably overkill, but it makes things easier). I’ll have almost everything closed down – no extra browser windows, no chat windows, maybe Twitter (but only so I can post updates and keep you all in the know). What I will have with me is five excel spreadsheets, four browser windows, and some snacks.

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To paraphrase (horribly butcher?) A Tale of Two Cities, prospects are the best of times and the worst of times for ottoneu owners. At least based on the number of questions I get about them.

The joy of ottoneu is you can sign that Double-A SS with the big bat and hope he develops into a star. The problem is how to find the right prospect. For every Mike Trout, there is an Andy Marte. Actually, for every Trout, there are about a billion Marte’s. And the chances are you, like me, are not a prospect evaluator, which makes it awfully hard to tell the difference.

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Over the next few weeks, my goal is going to be to do my best to help prepare you for the upcoming ottoneu auctions. But today, with the keeper deadline still fresh on all of our minds (I will have nightmares if Matt Moore strikes out everyone in sight this year…), I thought I’d stop and take a look at where we are today.

As of Friday night at midnight ET, every team in the ottoneu universe is (or at least should be) down to 40 or fewer players on the roster and $400 or less in salary spent, and that gives us a chance to see who all of you deemed worthy of keeping.

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The clock is ticking ever closer to the ottoneu keeper deadline and you now have less than a week to make your final cuts. By the end of the day (midnight ET) on January 31, your rosters need to be at or below 40 players and you have to have at least $1 in cap space for every open roster spot.

I know I am still making some hard choices – should I trade a $14 Jason Kipnis for a $32 Paul Goldschmidt? Which of my five $20+ pitchers and three $30+ OF should I keep? – and that is just in one league. So I thought I would take a look at those choices and hope that it can help you make your last cuts, as well.

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Smarter minds than mine have addressed the Indians experimenting with Carlos Santana at 3B, but those minds have looked at things like “defense” and “what the Indians need” and “does this make any sense at all.”

But you and I, we are fantasy players and care not for defensive deficiencies or displaced utility infielders. What we care about is whether or not Carlos Santana playing 3B impacts his fantasy value.

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The Alex Rodriguez news will send a lot of fantasy owners scrambling for a new 3B, but it has other implications on the Yankees infield that may present an opportunity for savvy fantasy owners.

Brad Johnson looked at what the A-Rod suspension means for the Yankees yesterday. Not long thereafter, New York added Scott Sizemore and Ken Rosenthal reported that the Yanks are unlikely to add another MLB IF, which means the in-house options Johnson considered – along with Sizemore – are basically the only options in the Bronx.

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Patrick Corbin has been a regular topic of thought and conversation for me the past few weeks, which tells you one thing about me – that I maybe think and talk about baseball more than I should – and another about him – that there is considerable reason to discuss him. Both are true.

First, Brad Johnson projected a wide range of values for Corbin and offered his expectation that Corbin would fall near the bottom of that range. Then, I had a long (for Twitter) conversation about him on Twitter. Michael Salfino asked why Corbin was so underrated; I suggested that his K/9 might be the problem, Eno Sarris pointed out a scary platoon split, and now I am here to tell you not to be worried about either.

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I spend a lot of time analyzing baseball, but sometimes you need to take a step back and analyze yourself. With New Year’s Eve coming up fast, now is just one of those times.

Between January 1, 2013 and the end of the regular season, I offered a lot of advice in my articles here on RotoGraphs, and thought I’d take a look back at each measurable piece of advice and grade myself.

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I am getting ready to take part in my first weekly-lineup fantasy baseball league. I’ve done this for fantasy football (which I suppose goes without saying) and for fantasy basketball (back in high school when the “find the guy playing five games this week” strategy seemed novel), but never for baseball.

As I try to build a team, I am realizing that I need to completely shift the way I value opportunity.

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